Building a Mountain

As I headed over to my father's the other day, I noticed that the cement plant is building a new mountain.

Maybe it's just a really big mound of dirt. Maybe it will be moved. I don't know, and don't care enough to ask.

At any rate, that dirt popping up over the trees wasn't there a few months ago. But now it is there.

I know they have been blasting a lot - it shakes the house occasionally even though this is probably at least 1.5 miles from me - but I didn't realize until I topped this hill that they were doing so much "landscaping."

The cement plant, which is the only one in Virginia, is the county's dirtiest industry, though they try very hard to pretend they are "green" and win awards in their industry for being energy efficient. Their website touts all kinds of Energy Star awards, and maybe for a cement plant they are "green" and energy efficient. The dust that gathers on the furniture and the dust that I pick up in my HEPA air filters that I have to run 24 hours a day because of my asthma tell me that they aren't exactly non-polluting.

I can see the crap that blows out of their stacks.

They occasionally are fined for noncompliance with Virginia Department of Environmental Quality regulations, but not often. That doesn't mean they are always in compliance, it just means they don't get caught. It also doesn't mean that the compliance regulations aren't too mild. For me, with my asthma, they're not strong enough.

The thing that really burns me? Most of the cement plant property once belonged to either my ancestors or my husband's ancestors. Oh, great-great-great-grandpappy, did you know what you were going to be bringing about one day?